For a proposed Special Session at the December 2006 MLA Convention inPhiladelphia, I am looking for papers that discuss the theme, problem,object, or practice of violence in recent British and Northern Irishwriting. I will consider abstracts until 10 March 2006, at which point Iwish to collaborate with two or three others in drafting a panelproposal to reach the MLA by 1 April 2006.

George Orwell once admitted that, "the gentleness of Englishcivilisation is mixed up with barbarities and anachronisms." But evengranting that Orwell is hardly the most reliable witness on the limitsof English gentility (leave that to the Celts or the citizens of thepost-colonies), few would deny that the contemporary UK has seenunprecedented anxiety about new, newly popular, and newly apocalypticforms of violence.

For a nation that fought two world wars in order to avoid ever fightinganother, the UK seems to have a rare appetite for military violence. Inthe period since 1979 alone, it has fought three full-dress wars, a longanti-guerilla campaign, and numerous "humanitarian" or "police" actionsunder the aegis of the UN, EU, or NATO. From Bloody Sunday to theBrighton Bombing, political violence has been something of a norm in theUK—and with the phenomenon of the July 2005 Islamist suicide attacks inLondon, the unexamined divide between mainland "violence" and NorthernIrish "terrorism" seems more untenable than ever. The other "domestic"violence—from the fists and feet of misogyny to the new legal problem of"battered wife syndrome"—has rarely escaped the public eye, while thepress seldom tires of the various forms of public disorder. Thus, themugging "crisis" of the 1970s and '80s; race riots and racial attacksfrom Brixton to Burnley; football hooliganism in Liverpool, Edinburgh,or Rome; and the regular weekend punch-ups associated with the new"terrors" of binge drinking and chav culture.

How have literary artists dealt with such manifestations of violence?Are certain forms of violence specific to the UK, its nations,provinces, regions, or colonial dependencies? Have writers from Britainor Northern Ireland offered new insights into, or theories of, questionsof violence, war, or disorder? Are certain genres or styles—such asethnographies, thrillers, procedurals, or histories—particularlyapposite for the representation or analysis of violent acts? Is the UKin actual fact a more violent place than before; or is the myth ofArcadian gentleness destined to meet the same fate as other Britannicideologies?